86 lines
3.8 KiB
Markdown
86 lines
3.8 KiB
Markdown
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# Notifications (Windows, Linux, macOS)
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All three operating systems provide means for applications to send notifications
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to the user. Electron conveniently allows developers to send notifications with
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the [HTML5 Notification API](https://notifications.spec.whatwg.org/), using
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the currently running operating system's native notification APIs to display it.
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**Note:** Since this is an HTML5 API it is only available in the renderer process.
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```javascript
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let myNotification = new Notification('Title', {
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body: 'Lorem Ipsum Dolor Sit Amet'
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})
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myNotification.onclick = () => {
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console.log('Notification clicked')
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}
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```
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While code and user experience across operating systems are similar, there
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are fine differences.
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## Windows
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* On Windows 10, notifications "just work".
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* On Windows 8.1 and Windows 8, a shortcut to your app, with a [Application User
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Model ID][app-user-model-id], must be installed to the Start screen. Note,
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however, that it does not need to be pinned to the Start screen.
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* On Windows 7, notifications are not supported. You can however send
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"balloon notifications" using the [Tray API][tray-balloon].
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Furthermore, in Windows 8, the maximum length for the notification body is 250
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characters, with the Windows team recommending that notifications should be kept
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to 200 characters. That said, that limitation has been removed in Windows 10, with
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the Windows team asking developers to be reasonable. Attempting to send gigantic
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amounts of text to the API (thousands of characters) might result in instability.
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### Advanced Notifications
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Later versions of Windows allow for advanced notifications, with custom templates,
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images, and other flexible elements. To send those notifications (from either the
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main process or the renderer process), use the userland module
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[electron-windows-notifications](https://github.com/felixrieseberg/electron-windows-notifications),
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which uses native Node addons to send `ToastNotification` and `TileNotification` objects.
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While notifications including buttons work with just `electron-windows-notifications`,
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handling replies requires the use of [`electron-windows-interactive-notifications`](https://github.com/felixrieseberg/electron-windows-interactive-notifications), which
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helps with registering the required COM components and calling your Electron app with
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the entered user data.
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### Quiet Hours / Presentation Mode
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To detect whether or not you're allowed to send a notification, use the userland module
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[electron-notification-state](https://github.com/felixrieseberg/electron-notification-state).
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This allows you to determine ahead of time whether or not Windows will silently throw
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the notification away.
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## macOS
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Notifications are straight-forward on macOS, you should however be aware of
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[Apple's Human Interface guidelines regarding notifications](https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/OSXHIGuidelines/NotificationCenter.html).
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Note that notifications are limited to 256 bytes in size - and will be truncated
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if you exceed that limit.
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### Advanced Notifications
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Later versions of macOS allow for notifications with an input field, allowing the user
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to quickly respond to a notification. In order to send notifications with an input field,
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use the userland module [node-mac-notifier](https://github.com/CharlieHess/node-mac-notifier).
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### Do not disturb / Session State
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To detect whether or not you're allowed to send a notification, use the userland module
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[electron-notification-state](https://github.com/felixrieseberg/electron-notification-state).
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This will allow you to detect ahead of time whether or not the notification will be displayed.
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## Linux
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Notifications are sent using `libnotify`, it can show notifications on any
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desktop environment that follows [Desktop Notifications
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Specification][notification-spec], including Cinnamon, Enlightenment, Unity,
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GNOME, KDE.
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